Exclusive: The New York Times wants a system of censorship for the Internet to block what it calls “fake news,” but the Times ignores its own record of publishing “fake news,” reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
In its lead editorial on Sunday, The New York Times decried what it deemed “The Digital Virus Called Fake News” and called for Internet censorship to counter this alleged problem, taking particular aim at Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for letting “liars and con artists hijack his platform.”
As this mainstream campaign against “fake news” quickly has gained momentum in the past week, two false items get cited repeatedly, a claim that Pope Francis endorsed Donald Trump and an assertion that Trump was prevailing in the popular vote over Hillary Clinton. I could add another election-related falsehood, a hoax spread by Trump supporters that liberal documentarian Michael Moore was endorsing Trump when he actually was backing Clinton.
New York Times building in New York City. (Photo from Wikipedia)
But I also know that Clinton supporters were privately pushing some salacious and unsubstantiated charges about Trump’s sex life, and Clinton personally charged that Trump was under the control of Russian President Vladimir Putin although there was no evidence presented to support that McCarthyistic accusation.
The simple reality is that lots of dubious accusations get flung around during the heat of a campaign – nothing new there – and it is always a challenge for professional journalists to swat them down the best we can. What’s different now is that the Times envisions some structure (or algorithm) for eliminating what it calls “fake news.”
But, with a stunning lack of self-awareness, the Times fails to acknowledge the many times that it has published “fake news,” such as reporting in 2002 that Iraq’s purchase of aluminum tubes meant that it was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program; its bogus analysis tracing the firing location of a Syrian sarin-laden rocket in 2013 back to a Syrian military base that turned out to be four times outside the rocket’s range; or its publication of photos supposedly showing Russian soldiers inside Russia and then inside Ukraine in 2014 when it turned out that the “inside-Russia” photo was also taken inside Ukraine, destroying the premise of the story.
The controversial map developed by Human Rights Watch and embraced by the New York Times, supposedly showing the flight paths of two missiles from the Aug. 21 Sarin attack intersecting at a Syrian military base.
These are just three examples among many of the Times publishing “fake news” – and all three appeared on Page One before being grudgingly or partially retracted, usually far inside the newspaper under opaque headlines so most readers wouldn’t notice. Much of the Times’ “fake news” continued to reverberate in support of U.S. government propaganda even after the partial retractions.
Who Is the Judge?
So, should Zuckerberg prevent Facebook users from circulating New York Times stories? Obviously, the Times would not favor that solution to the problem of “fake news.” Instead, the Times expects to be one of the arbiters deciding which Internet outlets get banned and which ones get gold seals of approval.
The Times lead editorial, following a front-page article on the same topic on Friday, leaves little doubt what the newspaper would like to see. It wants major Internet platforms and search engines, such as Facebook and Google, to close off access to sites accused of disseminating “fake news.”
Photograph published by the New York Times purportedly taken in Russia of Russian soldiers who later appeared in eastern Ukraine. However, the photographer has since stated that the photo was actually taken in Ukraine, and the U.S. State Department has acknowledged the error.
The editorial said, “a big part of the responsibility for this scourge rests with internet companies like Facebook and Google, which have made it possible for fake news to be shared nearly instantly with millions of users and have been slow to block it from their sites. …
“Facebook says it is working on weeding out such fabrications. It said last Monday that it would no longer place Facebook-powered ads on fake news websites, a move that could cost Facebook and those fake news sites a lucrative source of revenue. Earlier on the same day, Google said it would stop letting those sites use its ad placement network. These steps would help, but Facebook, in particular, owes its users, and democracy itself, far more.
“Facebook has demonstrated that it can effectively block content like click-bait articles and spam from its platform by tweaking its algorithms, which determine what links, photos and ads users see in their news feeds. … Facebook managers are constantly changing and refining the algorithms, which means the system is malleable and subject to human judgment.”
The Times editorial continued: “This summer, Facebook decided to show more posts from friends and family members in users’ news feeds and reduce stories from news organizations, because that’s what it said users wanted. If it can do that, surely its programmers can train the software to spot bogus stories and outwit the people producing this garbage. …
“Mr. Zuckerberg himself has spoken at length about how social media can help improve society. … None of that will happen if he continues to let liars and con artists hijack his platform.”
Gray Areas
But the problem is that while some falsehoods may be obvious and clear-cut, much information exists in a gray area in which two or more sides may disagree on what the facts are. And the U.S. government doesn’t always tell the truth although you would be hard-pressed to find recent examples of the Times recognizing that reality. Especially over the past several decades, the Times has usually embraced the Official Version of a disputed event and has deemed serious skepticism out of bounds.
Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, co-author of the Iraq “aluminum tube” story.
That was the way the Times treated denials from the Iraqi government and some outside experts who disputed the “aluminum tube” story in 2002 – and how the Times has brushed off disagreements regarding the U.S. government’s portrayal of events in Syria, Ukraine and Russia. Increasingly, the Times has come across as a propaganda conduit for Official Washington rather than a professional journalistic entity.
But the Times and other mainstream news outlets – along with some favored Internet sites – now sit on a Google-financed entity called the First Draft Coalition, which presents itself as a kind of Ministry of Truth that will decide which stories are true and which are “fake.”
If the Times’ editorial recommendations are followed, the disfavored stories and the sites publishing them would no longer be accessible through popular search engines and platforms, essentially blocking the public’s access to them. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “What to Do About ‘Fake News.’”]
The Times asserts that such censorship would be good for democracy – and it surely is true that hoaxes and baseless conspiracy theories are no help to democracy – but regulation of information in the manner that the Times suggests has more than a whiff of Orwellian totalitarianism to it.
And the proposal is especially troubling coming from the Times, with its checkered recent record of disseminating dangerous disinformation.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
For years, on the infrequent occasions the Times would mention the legal status of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, it would say, “which much of the world regards as illegal.” They have recently begun saying, w the same infrequency, “which most of the world regards as illegal.” But of course the entire world regards Jewish settlements in the West Bank as illegal, which the Times surely knows. So what is saying “which most of the world regards as illegal” but fake news?
The contours of what this censorship might look like are becoming clearer – and the Bellingcat is once again in the mix. Check out the story on WaPo on “russian propaganda” – they cite some group called PropOrNot as the true and final judge of what is propaganda and what is not, and guess what – Harvard award recipient consortiumnews.com is propaganda (along with voltaire.net, counterpunch,com, etc. the list is long). The Bellingcat is mentioned as a “friend” of PropOrNot hehe. So basically guilt by association, for “echoing” the “propaganda” of godless russians, just labeling and no attempt to show how false or true the so-called “propaganda” is. I believe the war is upon us – corporate msm went into 100% war propaganda mode.
NYT wants censorship simply because their own propaganda has become less accepted with the advent of the internet age. I think also that having calls like this means that the world is in desperate need of an internet that is not dominated by one country or group of countries which means competition – which clearly the US does not want these days. For all of the US’ speeches about freedom it is clearly showing that it wants to dominate and control every aspect of life on this planet – that’s dictatorial Big Brother.
Does anyone have a copy of this NYT editorial for me? I don’t know why, but that page is impossible to reach for me.
Before the NY Times (or any other corporate media outlet) starts talking about fake news, I demand a full acknowledgement and public apology for telling us that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, that Assad had weapons of Mass Destruction, that Iran was making weapons of mass destruction, that there were torpedoes in the Gulf of Tonkin, no weapons on the Lusitania, no Spanish mine in Havana Harbor that blerw up the USS Maine, and the thousands of other blatant lies used to trick the American people into wars.
Only after they clean up their own house will we listen to them blather about the dangers of “Fake” news!
It’s hard to add much to this thread; the article is concise and commenters have offered salient observations. Our society still works – haltingly at times – because most people are raised on the “golden rule”. “Don’t lie, don’t steal and don’t cheat” still comprise valid moral currency, even if greed and corruption offer easy access to the perks mainly reserved to the privileged oligarchs.
In historical perspective, what would happen if a failing propaganda mill like NYT managed to impose its maniacal will on the internet? I hate to think that examples such as “The Torbit Document” and “The Gemstone File” would once again become the standard of truth. They did contain elements of truth. So did Mae Brussels’ radio broadcasts. And, I remember spending hours glued to an old Hallicrafters short-wave radio. I recapped my 1947 model and substituted an octal Sovtek (Russian) rectifier tube for the old four-prong version a couple of years ago. When I turned it on, I got absolute silence…until I turned the dial. It exploded…with crystal clear stations from all over the world. It’s tedious to wade through all the propaganda, like the CIA sponsored “Radio Marti” aimed at Cuba – the Cubans laugh at that, and it costs US taxpayers millions of dollars a year. Since the advent of the internet, American short-wave has been largely co-opted by loony-tunes end-times religious “fire and brimstone” programming. But foreign broadcasts are still alive and well. One way or another, the truth still gets out.
Then, consider this. Even if the internet were completely censored, what would the “rubes” still get to see? Unemployed steelworkers in Pennsylvania and coalminers in West Virginia would still get to see all the advertising. They’d wonder how it is that their countrymen are reading ads for vacations in the Maldives, buying Maseratis, wearing Brooks Brothers suits and eating quiche while they are struggling to buy Oscar Meyer wieners at Wal-Mart. Every ad on the internet rubs salt in the wounds of the disenfranchised.
Alex Jones has a bigger following than CNN. Sure, it’s predominantly an entertainment venue, but based on wide reading and observation, I’d say it contains more “truth” than the NYT. Outlets such as Info Wars are also the only platforms willing to host dissenting personalities. It’s a double-whammy. They don’t get the same credence mainstream media offers. They have to endure the embarrassment of appearing on a program that may also endorse “alien abductions”. But…the truth still gets out. Just as it did in 1917 Czarist Russia or 1989 Soviet Russia. Every trip to the internet will still be like the Bolshevik hordes storming the royal palace. They’ll gets their noses rubbed into the reality of how bad they’re being screwed. There’s no turning back, and American oligarchs are slowly but surely headed for the same fate as the Romanov empire. Hopefully, it won’t be as bloody.
Very uplifting. I agree the lack of truth in media, will be the MSM’s downfall. Our MSM has painted themselves into a corner by being dependent upon advertisers. Low ratings will reduce all they’re paid checks.
Strangling democracy by Washington through the media and sponsored by an autocratic government, It all reminds me more of the Nazi regime under Hitler which was initiated by Joseph Goebbels following en excellent bool by Gustave LeBon: Psychology of the Masses. So Fascism is alive and well in Washington no wonder the Obama government supports and finances Kiev open Nazi uprising. Wake up America and support president-elect Donald Trump.
Ron Paul has made a list of journalists that colluded with the Clinton campaign including citations for the collusion carried out.
http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com/archives/revealed-the-real-fake-news-list
NYT is not an acceptable arbiter of what is fake news and in a free society there should be no need to distinguish sources of news. The authority to do so will inevitably be misused.
“…that the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies, and that the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones.” – Justice Brandeis
People have a right to decide for themselves what is fake, biased or unfounded.
Actually I like this idea of eliminating fake news from the Internet. I am glad Robert Perry brought up the fact that the NY Times has disseminated fake news. It would not be a bad thing if ALL fake news, including fake news printed by the NY Times or any other establishment or non-establisent publication were banned from the net. Question is how would it sort out what is satire from what is fake:
I think we should acknowledge Kurt Nimmo’s earlier warning about this very thing. His article talks about Goog’e “Jigsaw.” It’s obviously the same program. If Google’s zigzagging to tire out those following their evil actions, it won’t work. See “Google’s Jigsaw: Undermining Alternative Media.” (http://bit.ly/2gbM3wT) Between the traitorous alt media and crap like Jigsaw/ First Draft Coalition, the light is hard pressed getting through to those who would like to see it. What happens when the fascists succeed in safeguarding democracy fully, by snuffing out the ability of those who tell truth to tell it? The answer depends on what you believe, Doesn’t it? Do you believe in a superhuman savior? Do you believe that an imperfect human or group of humans will save us? If the latter, and that isn’t working out, You’re then left with nothing.
So is it a coincidence that the NYT should reference positive Trump articles when appealing to it’s readers for how Google and Facebook should prevent the distribution of fake news? Is it a coincidence that the NYT is crying foul after Queen Hillary is denied the presidency? Funny how because Obama’s TTP trade agreement goes down the drain, that the NYT points to fake news influencing the Phillipines government for buying into whatever fake news the NYT is describing as the reason for the TTP’s failure. As a registered Democrate I am ashamed that this call for a truth board is being instigated by the very party I belong too.
I’m also curious to how Steve Bannon may react to this NYT call to take away our right to have a free press. Breitbart just like their liberal counterpart Huffington Post is filled with very slanted articles, which do more than tug at the truth. I would place bets that Steve Bannon wouldn’t like doing what the NYT is suggesting. I would further place bets on the Right being as against a truth board, as much as most people on the Left would be if this press restriction gains attention. This NYT suggestion isn’t Right or Left inspired, it is agenda driven by the Deep State. America gets closer by the day to becoming a full fledged Police State. Correction we have become a Police State, now it’s time to define it into becoming a Fascist Police State of the highest order. It’s their club, and you don’t belong to it. Where’s George Carlin when you need him?
If truth were what it should be, and if we were to prosecute those who lie to us, well then let’s start with the political candidates and their campaign promises. There is where the lies hurt, and degrade, the citizens the most. Some whack job writer, writing about a candidates polling data, or whatever it is the Pope has to say about a certain candidate, doesn’t even come close to the hurt these lying politicians inflict upon the commons with their lies. Before we pass new laws restricting the press from printing news as they see it, we should pass a law that any politician who doesn’t live up to they’re campaign promises pays a fine, or goes to jail, or both…let’s see how soon the NYT will print my suggestion, since the NYT is worried about our true democracy so much.
Oh yeah, how will the NYT report on Israel without lying?
Yes, truly putting the Fox in charge of the hen house. I was not aware of the First Draft Coalition but an AI that gets to censor the news for the good of mankind sounds a bit Orwellian and a little scary. I would rather be free to wallow through the dung than be strapped in front of a tube with my eyes propped open with toothpicks watching videos of The Dear Leader. Heck, you might not make the team Mr. Parry. That would be a tragedy indeed. If it were up to me and it most certainly is not, I would absolutely pick you as my first pick for top censor. Dedication to the truth above all else wherever it leads and the calling out on bogus is what this website does. It does it very well. Good job with all you are doing to preserve journalism as it should be practiced. Hugely skeptical of everything and data and fact driven.
The New York Times has been documented extensively as providing a fake picture of Israel and Palestine, essentially functioning as an Israeli propaganda organ. One example,
http://mondoweiss.net/2016/08/critiques-students-coverage/
I was listening to NPR where they were interviewing a reporter from the NYT’s about Facebook and fake news. I thought, how hypocritical. The New York Times, the newspaper that gave us the infamous Judith Miller. If you remember, Ms. Miller got her source information from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney and would publish it in the Sunday Times. Cheney would then appear on the Sunday interview pograms and tell his fake stories and confirm their truth by saying he had read it in this morning’s New York Times.
Then later this afternoon, I noticed this article by Robert Perry covering that same issue.
NYT is losing it because many people refuse to read this Zionist paper. Boycott the NYT!
I am reaching out to progressive thought leaders for help in getting this evidence of Trump’s and the RNC criminal connections before a Congressional Committee prior to the Dec. 19 date when the Electoral College signs off on his presidency.
The Trump election needs to be invalidated based on the evidence that merits a Public Investigation and Prosecution into the fact that the Republican National Committee and its Financiers (the Manhattan Institute, American Enterprise Group, the Hudson Institute, the American Spectator Foundation, AIPAC, the Likud /Revisionist Zionist Party, the Carlyle Group) are the Public State Sponsors/ Cover Groups for the Deep State terrorist groups who sponsored virtually all the terrorist acts, coup d’etats, and genocides before and after 9/11 (CIA Covert Operations, NATO Gladio Team B, P2, ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah, SAVAK).
These kinds of corruption are in control of both major parties. It is a Repub judiciary so a legal case would have more luck against the Dems, but money=justice for them, so maybe Soros can balance the scales for the Dems..Taking down both major parties would heartily please a majority. In reality, of course, the ballot-chad Supreme Court would laugh off a challenge to the Repubs.
The effort to form a truly unifying third party, that serves progressives as well as the working class, and does not sell out to oligarchy and bury the real issues in fashionable identity propaganda as the Dems have, will be more worthwhile.
The NYT is suggesting this because they’re losing business — loads of it — for the simple reason that they’re now rated lower than Fox News, formerly referred to as No-News. They’re awash in misinformation and rather than own up to their own incompetence they’re reaching out for scapegoats. Just like Hillary.
I have yet to see someone comment on Hillary’s post-election meltdown in which she apparently beat her husband and John Podesta and may have been drunk. (This I’m sure is just the type of thing the NYT considers un-newsworthy and wants deleted.) But think about it: Suppose this information is true: What does it tell us about the state of our election system? And about how rigged our election are? Would someone who ran an honest race, and then lost, behave like that? These stories suggest that Hillary had an enormous entitlement problem and someone, maybe more than one, didn’t come through. And I’m not referring here to the voters.
I’ve also heard stories that Trump won by a landslide which when you consider the coverage of online rallies where people were flocking to him in the thousands, and we rarely even saw Hillary, would seem to make sense. My own theory is that the PTB intended to make Hillary President, but she lost by such a wide margin that trying to plagiarize and/or annul the results would have brought the house down. So the second option was for the PTB to use their rigging powers to make the vote appear to have been extremely close, the better to fuel the ensuing color revolution and calls for the electoral college to change their vote because Hillary supposedly won the popular vote. That Hillary won the popular vote is just one more lie. If she had that capacity she wouldn’t have needed all the help she didn’t get.
Times writers constantly insist the US is a democracy, yet studies from ivy league universities indicate it is an oligarchy. Chomsky, who is smarter than anyone at NYT, has noted this is indeed the case, saying democracy would be an alternative to the US political system. The US also constantly overthrows and tries to subvert democracies internationally, virtually always with favorable reporting from NYT.
So to imply NYT likes or wants democracy goes against the evidence. The evidence suggests NYT writers/owners want oligarchy or totalitarianism in the US and dictatorship in foreign countries the US dominates. That many of the owners of NYT have also been on boards of weapons makers may also be relevant.
NYT would be a rather small paper if all the fake stuff was removed.
That pattern is also present in Greek media. Complete absence of facts or proving points, they just embrace what the opposition mainstream parties are saying.
Long gone are the days when media kept some ethical code….
“regulation of information in the manner that the Times suggests has more than a whiff of Orwellian totalitarianism to it.”
I’m not sure about that – it seems more like something out of Huxley’s “Brave New World”, to me!
However: The Internet (in reality the World Wide Web, which made the Internet ubiquitous) became pervasive precisely because nobody owns it, due to Tim Berners-Lee’s decision to donate the underlying technology to society in support of it’s development. (To the chagrin of parasites like Billl Gates, who claimed that the Internet was a passing fad just because he didn’t -and couldn’t- own it)!
The World Wide Web Consortium (w3c.org) does and can’t be bought.
So while Google tracks us all for it’s own profit DuckDuckGo promotes the opposite and became my default search engine. And if FaceBook begins to censor it’s user’s posts, they’ll go elsewhere.
In other words, THIS Brave New World WON’T loan itself to the pretensions of the NYT, Trump Tower’s versions of his Grandfather Friedrich Drumpf’s Brothel’s or anyone else’s unfounded fears and delusions.
The Pendulum swings and will swing back, inexorably! (It’s already started).
Yes! DuckDuckGo is the way to go. I have switched my search engine to this as well. I cherish this Nation with all of its flaws. As Winston Churchill said, “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” This very recent argument about censoring “fake news” which is being considered by the NY Times and others has a great potential to be misused. Placing the NY Times on a select group of media outlets to determine which websites are to be blocked is like placing the government in charge of what we can see and read on the internet. The NY Times has been easily enlisted to promote bogus stories coming out of Washington just as surely as Fox news is a mouthpiece for the Republican Party. Such an edifice might even ban this website and others who differ from the party line. This website is among those to be trusted to deliver the truth no matter which way it cuts across party lines. Robert Parry has been kind of like a Captain Kirk in the media going where no ‘man’ or person to be politically correct has gone before. It speaks truth. But it is also reviled by the establishment for doing so. I would hate to see it blacklisted by some arbitration panel headed by the major purveyors of fake news which are largely regarded as bastions of authentic journalism like NYT but which in actuality are purveyors of government lies which have had the effect of misleading us into wars based on false stories about threats that were not ever proven to have happened. The NYT has never apologized as Mr. Parry reports in a front page article which said “We lied to all of you, we are sorry for that”.
This has had significant repercussions as well. We can thank the NY Times for a bunch of things they lied about that Mr. Parry has pointed out like the Fake News the NYT has published about Russia invading Ukraine. Is it any wonder why Mr. Putin would rather not see Hillary Clinton in the White House after the mess in Syria and Ukraine?
We need to be very cautious of groups like this “Coalition” which would seek to block websites based on their own interpretation of what is “fake” and what is true.
It just might be an end run around the principles of Net Neutrality which were bolstered by Obama’s insistence and eventual victory when the FCC re-regulated the ISPs as Public Utilities in an effort to thwart Republican backed plans paid for by lobby money to allow ISPs to charge websites an admission fee. That would certainly result in a form of self censorship we see in commercial news media today where the media corporations self censor any news they feel would piss off their paying advertising customers.
It would shut down independent not for profit news organizations. It would be an end to a form of free speech heralded in by the World Wide Web and would further serve to create a platform for information from wealthy sources and eliminate information from sources which were perceived by the ISPs as counter to their profit motives.
Good Job Mr. Obama! We need to preserve websites with diverse views which might be counter to the establishment. Unfortunately that includes other bad actors who do not have integrity and who tell lies.
If I trust myself to figure out who is lying to me and who is telling the truth, I must assume others can and will do the same. That is what democracy is all about.
What this website lacks is the monetary power of other websites to broadcast widely and it is a small voice. But it is here. You are here and I am here. We can voice our opinions without the fear of censorship. Censorship is a thing to be very wary of.
Thank you Mr. Parry for calling out BS on the NY Times efforts to control what we can see and read.
2003 was when the House voted By a 400-to-21 vote to upend the FCC decision to deregulate the media. It was apparent then that everyone across all party lines saw the clear and present danger of commercializing the media into an even more consolidated grip on power which would have benefited stock holders and impoverished the commons even more than it is.
By a 40-25 bipartisan vote, the House Appropriations Committee in mid-July 2003 approved a provision, sponsored by Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.), that would undo the FCC’s new relaxed ownership rules and reinstate the 35 percent market cap.
Obey described the provision, which was inserted into a bill to fund the Commerce, Justice, and State departments, as an attempt to stop major corporations from dictating what kind of news and entertainment most Americans see on TV.
“There’s a great deal of consternation about that across the country,” Obey said during debate Tuesday. “In my view that is a severe threat to democracy.”
And so we come forward 13 years and we are asked to support a coalition which will have the right to ban news it deems as fake.
Having been defeated by Obama in getting the end to Net Neutrality enacted we now get this….
I say no way!
I’d rather slog through the lies from the Alt Right than face a new corporate challenge to end a free internet.
He said…She said….They said…..What ever happened to the American rich kid who was convicted of vandalism in Singapore….I think maybe they caned his little ass…..The entire planet has become a drama soap / flea market…..You will find me at booth # 17….selling water soaked canes of course……lovely southern weather lately
This is akin to the town drunk telling an occasional imbiber that he may have had too much to drink on New Year’s Eve.
Exactly!
AND COMPARE THIS…..if you think I am too upset by the slimebucket mainstream media:
https://youtu.be/uyS3Ghevf2I
2LTDM
The MSM have concluded that the reason for their failure to successfully promote the candidate that their owners wanted to be elected was the “fake news” alternatives. Instead of learning a lesson and correcting their ways, they decided to escalate confrontation to the censorship of the competition. How the Sulzberger’s disingenuous letter looks naive now: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/13/us/elections/to-our-readers-from-the-publisher-and-executive-editor.html?_r=0
The MSM need:
1) audiences returned (with advertising dollars) through censorship of alternatives and
2) tax-payer subsidies,
because consumers do not want to pay for lies and propaganda from their own pockets. Otherwise, these lying companies will remain unprofitable to their owners.
And THIS is truly outrageous:
“But the Times and other mainstream news outlets – along with some favored Internet sites – now sit on a Google-financed entity called the First Draft Coalition, which presents itself as a kind of Ministry of Truth that will decide which stories are true and which are “fake.”
I SAY WE SACK THESE FRAUDS .
2LT D Morrisseau contact data above
Dennis Morrisseau
USArmy Officer[Vietnam era] ANTI-WAR
FOR TRUMP
Lieutenant Morrisseau’s Rebellion
FIRECONGRESS.org
POB 177, W. Pawlet, VT 05775
[email protected]
802 645 9727
Frauds they are, Dennis; you have the right spirit!
Mainstream Media Fake & Faked News
The Once Free & Open Media is the only Business mentioned in and protected by the Constitution and is supposed to operate as a defacto 4th branch of Government providing Government oversight and keeping the American People informed.
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The News Stations were once independently owned and were operated without any allegiance to profitability. That was then.
How did the Once Free & Open Media become the Corporate Controlled, Government Censored Mainstream News Ministry of Propaganda?
1.Monopolistic Media ownership
2.News became Entertainment
3. News went from operating at a loss to a Profit Center
4.Investigative Reporting gave way to purchased or Government supplied pre-written News Scripts & pre-made video clips
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Big Corporations are not independently operated sovereign entities. Almost all of Mainstream Media is owned by just 6 Corporations:
GE, News-Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, CBS.
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“Media Consolidation: The Illusion Of Choice”
http://www.frugaldad.com/media-consolidation-infographic/
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“The Transformation of Network News. How Profitability Has Moved Networks Out of Hard News” http://niemanreports.org/articles/the-transformation-of-network-news/
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The Media no longer conducts Investigative Reporting. The “Reporters” have become Teleprompter Readers and News Script Regurgitators: “CNN is much more than a 24-hour cable news channel; the news organization also offers information products to other news businesses. One of its most-profitable products is called Newsource, a newswire that distributes live information, video and scripts to television stations around the world”
http://thedesk.matthewkeys.net/2013/12/heres-how-conan-obrien-gets-news-anchors-to-say-the-same-thing/
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What is your favorite Mainstream News Channel? It doesn’t matter one whit, they ALL say the same thing since they’re reading off the same purchased or Government supplied scripts:
“Media Brainwashing – News simply repeats the same taglines & phrases OVER and OVER”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jH8dejYGa5A
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“Proof that Mainstream Media is scripted”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxlLO2zMYKQ
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Must Watch!!!!
Why You Should Never Trust The Mainstream Media”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khwERBhf1eE
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-WARNING: Reading off the same script as “News” is pretty bad & sad but it gets worse, much worse.
Much of the “News” reported & shown is FAKE & FAKED often using “Crisis Actors” & Green Screen Technology.
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“How Mainstream Media Fakes The News – Behind The Scenes ” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIUU_VIZn6o
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“MEDIA HOAXES EXPOSED! Naomi Wolf Reveals How & Why Fake News Stories Are Created & Pushed ”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrYdpQAZP7U
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“Former CBS Reporter Exposes Media Lies, Internet Shills & Astroturfing – MUST SEE!!!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0s__qs0cBek
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“Reporter gets angry and tells us the REAL news ”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Syjp9lsWBhc
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“USA News Is FAKED!! PROOF!! Green screens, CGI & Crisis Actors”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sKTe6hzlio- “SCRIPT-Top 10 Staged Media Events!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHDDQVZ-A98
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“Emmy Award Winning Reporter Exposes Obama Media”
Video reveals why this Investigative Reporter quit CBS News after a 20 year career https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rflIBZ4DX-A
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“FAKE NEWS EXPOSED (Isis, Mass Shootings, Terror Attacks…) CIA ILLUMINATI ”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHJ4sQ0z7XY
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” Fake News!! CNN & BBC Busted!! ISIS Is A Fake Threat!!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km5CJo9JkDI
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“How to Tell a Fake News Story From a Real One”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kdq0UANIBXI
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Bonus”: Almost everything you use, eat, wear, buy comes from just10 Multi-National Corporations which are in return owned and controlled by the Elite few aka Cabal, aka Secret Government, etc.
“The 10 Corporations That Control Almost Everything You Buy” http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-11-24/10-corporations-control-almost-everything-you-buy
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Large Infographic http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2013/11/20131124_o10corps.jpg
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Please Copy & Share This Compilation.
Help Me WAKE UP AMERICA.
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You are right on the mark, and Thomas Paine is rolling over in his grave!
If the First Amendment means anything, it cannot be gotten around by calling the Internet a “private” thing and demanding it be.subject to regulation by their opinion associates…..while The Times and The WaPo et al are FREE TO LIE & TWIST AT WILL..
NEWS MEDIA are all quasi public entities–existing in an “INFORMATION COMMONS”; AND THEY ARE NOT PERMITTED TO ENGAGE IN ANTI COMPETITIVE BEHAVIORS under anti trust laws either– just as all other businesses are not permitted to form combines in restraint of trade…..imho
IF THEY WANT THIS WAR WITH US AND THIS INTERNET…..AND CONTINUE TO TRY TO SHACKLE US,,,,,THEN I THINK WE SHOULD BOYCOTT THEM NOW…..BOYCOTT THEM INTO THE GROUND. .. STARTING NOW. I would relish such a fight now.
The Times et al are guilty of INTERFERENCE WITH CONTRACT at a minimum. But we can just bankrupt them.
Dennis Morrisseau
USArmy Officer[Vietnam era] ANTI-WAR
FOR TRUMP
Lieutenant Morrisseau’s Rebellion
FIRECONGRESS.org
POB 177, W. Pawlet, VT 05775
[email protected]
802 645 9727
NYT are a joke they pump out lie after lie and have the gall to call others
Good. Short and to the point.
Fake news is part of life. If you believe the NYT, or any TV you are risking it; you must have some understanding of each situation and find out by experience which websites are reliable. When I see the “Syrian Observatory for Human Rights” still being cited YEARS after its “truthiness” is shown to be nil, I discard the value of the post.
New York Times, the newspaper of Zionist record. Stop reading it.
Bloody hypocrites
Here’s the latest list of who’s to blame for Hillary Clinton’s defeat (it had nothing to do with the candidate, seriously!):
Facebook, the media, ignorant voters, FBI boss Comey, Wikileaks, Russian hackers, Putin, the Electoral College system, Jill Stein and Gary Johnson.
The New York Times collaborates with fake “citizen investigative journalist” Eliot Higgins and Bellingcat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mozxTk3Brqw
Promoting the work frauduct of Bellingcat notorious neocon “regime change” think tanks like the Atlantic Council, Times reporters Andrew E. Kramer and Michael R. Gordon tug away furiously in one great “post-truth” Propaganda 3.0 circle jerk.
Higgins was co-author of Atlantic Council “reports” on Ukraine (May 2015) and Syria (April 2016), both predominantly based on Higgins’ repeatedly debunked Bellingcat “investigations”.
Footnotes in the Atlantic Council reports cite NYT articles by Gordon and Kramer that ostensibly “confirm” the factually flaccid “findings” of Higgins.
Returning the “favor”, Gordon, Kramer, and other “reporters” at the Times write articles to promote the “independent” Higgins and Bellingcat.
Like some maniacal mantra, Higgins and Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council, and the Times constantly repeat the word “confirm”.
Gordon and Kramer give the Bellingcat and Atlantic Council authors a generous reach around, enabling the chronically infirm Higgins to keep it up.
And thanks to Google, Propaganda 3.0 has metastasized.
Google, an enthusiastic supporter of Higgins despite his track record of baseless claims about Syria and Russia, helped form the First Draft Coalition in June 2015 with Bellingcat as a founding member.
In addition to the fake “independent investigators” at Bellingcat, the First Draft “partner network” includes the New York Times and Washington Post, the two principal media organs for “regime change” propaganda.
In a triumph of Orwellian Newspeak, this Propaganda 3.0 coalition declares that member organizations will “work together to tackle common issues, including ways to streamline the verification process”.
Google’s new Minitrue (a self-appointed Ministry of Truth) is spewing forth a swarm of social media “journalists” ready to say 2 + 2 = 5 when the situation warrants.
The latest push to regulate the news and eliminate “fake news” is a very clear indication that the official propaganda is failing and that it now needs the support of The Regulators.
Firstly, in a normal society, the free market for news determines success or failure of a news source – would you consume a web site, a newspaper or a TV channel after you repeatedly find out that you have been lied to? I know that I have fallen for click-bait a couple of times, but after I realised this I have avoided its sources like a plague. This is called loss of credibility, which tends to be permanent.
Secondly, the word Mainstream in the Mainstream Media means that the importance of the “news” that such media deliver is mainstream. Why does a society need to worry about fringe news sources and regulate them, regardless if they are truthful or not? The return in effort would be much higher if the society ensured that its Mainstream Media minimises the number of its “errors” in reporting. Therefore, any proven falsity of the news in the Mainstream Media should be dealt with promptly and intensively.
In summary, the latest push against “fake news” makes little sense unless viewed as a protective measure for the proven official liars, a call for the introduction of a kink in the free market fabric that is hoped to return the audiences and the money that come with them to the former main-stream media which have lost most of their credibility through scandalous revelations, such as the direct and partisan participation in election campaign of a certain candidate.
Finally, the self-appointed arbiters of truth such as Facebook and Google (plus Apple), who have been exposed themselves in the latest election campaign to be partisan, will only lose influence if they participate in the kinking of the free market for news. The key point is that in a free market there are excellent alternatives to their mainstream but biased products. In other words, if Facebook and Google participate in protecting the mainstream news sources, next they will need a similar protection from “fake alternatives” themselves.
Kiza – as usual, well said!
Good point. Google is actively engaged in monopolistic practices including control of search results by oligarchy preferences. So is Amazon, in the book market at least, and probably Facebook as well.
But I have little confidence that a “free market” will challenge the oligarchy much. They control the information of the vast majority because of simple ignorance and fear of seeing the truth of oligarchy corruption. The serfs will have to be given a reality show to persuade them of reality, for as H.L. Mencken said (approx.) “The average man avoids truth as diligently as he avoids arson, regicide, and piracy on the high seas, and for the same reasons: it is dangerous, no good can come of it, and it doesn’t pay.” The mass media signal him that its narrative is safe and beneficial in the oligarchy-controlled workplace.
I should not have forgotten Twitter as another Truth Guardian: it is Facebook, Google and Twitter who more and more people will replace because they started censoring “fake news” websites.
Here is a short (example) list of the “fake alternatives” to the mainstream products of the Official Truth Guardians:
Google Chrome browser => Citrio browser for Windows and Mac http://citrio.com/,
Google Search Engine => Duck Duck Go https://duckduckgo.com/,
Facebook Social Networking => Ello https://ello.co/,
Twitter Social Platform => Gab Social Platform https://gab.ai/.
For more “fake alternatives” to the mainstream web applications you may check-out: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/six-alternatives-google-facebook-battle-online-privacy-1472156. Protecting personal privacy and avoiding net censorship are the two biggest reasons to switch.
Imagine a business (yes, the Western MSM are an ugly hybrid of Government PR and a marginally profitable business) in which the owners can declare the competition’s products low quality “fakes” and get the main gate-keepers, that is the supermarkets such as Facebook, Google and Twitter, to remove them from their shelves? How many businesses in this World would dream of being given such privilege to decide on the true quality of competitors’ products? Obviously, the Western MSM businesses are as privileged (by who?).
Is this not a clear case of anti-competitive behavior and collusion of dominant market players? The MSM and the gate-keepers should be prosecuted together. Maybe the new business-savy President will do.
Bingo! Right on target. You hit the nail on the head by calling out the hypocrites.
NYT just wants to have a monopoly on fake news.